Health Care: Death By Repetition

At Salon, Robert Reich argues that a authoritative, received wisdom that the public option is dead is much flimsier than it looks--a product of the political elite's echo chamber...one person said it, sounding authoritative, and now, striving for authoritative commentary, they're all saying it, but it's not true, and the danger is that it will become true. "The rightwing media fearmongers and demagogues have won," Reich says is the current (and false) wisdom; but it's just demagoguery by proxy, or by repetition. It's hard to measure the public option's chances: there are polls on the multiple angles of health reform--whether people think it will lower costs generally, help their own care, the care of others, whether they like their health coverage now, whether they think their own care will cost more under President Obama's plan--but at this point, it's mostly up to the lawmakers. Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) and others have often repeated that "at least three" Senate Democrats are said to be against the public option...we're not 100% sure who they are. So, absent certainty...I'm just going to repeat what Reich said. Perhaps it'll be a self-fulfilling prophesy of its own.